Ajay Moti of Booking.com explains which merchants should consider payments orchestration and elaborates on the build versus buy framework.
In a world where checkout abandonment, authorisation rates, and payment costs can swing margins, payments orchestration promises a unified way to route, optimise, and analyse transactions across multiple processors, gateways, and payment methods, while reducing technical overhead through a single API. It can be transformative – but not every merchant needs it the same, and the right build-versus-buy mix depends on scale, complexity, and strategic priorities.
Which merchants should consider orchestration?
International, multi-PSP merchants: if you sell across regions with different acquirers, currencies, and risk profiles, orchestration helps with dynamic routing, redundancy, and local optimisation without adding a slew of custom integrations to maintain.
Authorisation-sensitive verticals: digital goods, travel, mobility, marketplaces, and subscriptions live and die by basis points. Orchestration enables smart routing (by issuer BIN, card brand, value, or geography), retries, and network-token preferences to lift approvals while controlling cost and latency.
Merchants offering many alternative methods: if the adoption of alternative/ local payment methods (APMs/LPMs) is a growth lever, orchestration centralises connectors, reconciliation, and reporting, reducing time-to-market for local wallets, bank transfers, and pay-later options.
Companies facing frequent change: if you pilot new processors, optimise fees, or adapt to regulations often, orchestration lets you experiment safely without rewriting code across services.
Build vs. buy
Done well, orchestration becomes an experimentation engine, letting you ship fast, learn faster, and compound gains in acceptance, cost, and customer experience. However, there are various ways in which to get to a place where you can achieve these outcomes.
Build has some obvious pros and cons, namely:
- Full control: with everything in-house, a merchant can prioritise, develop, and iterate at their own pace. These merchants can create solutions to solve their own business complexity.
- Costs: building an in-house solution also involves all the maintenance that comes with it, from infrastructure to technical resources. In addition, the merchant would need a very robust and flexible data infrastructure to analyse the impact on authorisation rates, costs, etc.
- Scaling: there is an associated cost, not only for building the foundation of an orchestration platform but also for scaling and expanding it to meet new needs, which can include anything from regulatory requirements to allowing for new payment methods at checkout.
Buy has pros that are effectively the inverse of build, namely:
- Low barrier to entry: with a single API connection, a merchant can unlock the core capabilities of an orchestrator. While a merchant would still need tech teams to integrate and maintain the connection, the overhead is substantially lower than in the build scenario.
- Outsourcing knowledge: while it’s still critical to have a payments-savvy team in-house, a merchant can rely on their orchestration provider to stay abreast of new regulations and trends, similar to a traditional PSP partner.
- Scaling: relying on an external partner allows a merchant to scale at a pace that would be otherwise unlikely to be matched by building in-house.
Final thoughts
This is just the tip of the complexity iceberg. Modern-day realities to add to the mix include incorporating business models such as platforms, adding risk and fraud solutions, and centralising network tokens.
In summary, orchestration is a great tool for payments-savvy teams at fast-scaling, international merchants that are focused on reducing overall costs and increasing authorisation rates and resiliency.
This editorial piece was first published in The Paypers' Global Ecommerce Report 2026, which provides a complete overview of key trends and strategies to help businesses worldwide succeed. Download your free copy today to explore in-depth insights on global ecommerce trends, the latest innovations in payment solutions, and strategies to stay ahead in a competitive market.
About the author
Ajay Moti is a Senior Manager in the Fintech Partnerships team at Booking.com. He has worked in commercial and product roles both at startups and larger fintechs for the past twelve years, such as Adyen and Klarna. He is based in Amsterdam and is originally from the US.
About Booking.com
Part of Booking Holdings Inc., Booking.com’s mission is to make it easier for everyone to experience the world. By investing in the technology that helps take the friction out of travel, Booking.com’s marketplace seamlessly connects millions of travellers with memorable experiences every day. For more information, follow @bookingcom on social media or visit globalnews.booking.com.
